


Making perfect

by aesc



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Football (Soccer), Humor, Kid Fic, M/M, completely totally and utterly happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As is the case with most trials in Erik's life, this one starts with Charles gazing beseechingly at him and asking him for a favor. Not that their going-on-three years relationship is a trial, even though it started with Charles giving Erik the full benefit of sad blue eyes and asking him if he wouldn't mind opening his car door since he'd locked his keys inside, but still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Making perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pocky_slash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/gifts), [brilligspoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brilligspoons/gifts).



> This is for pocky_slash and brilligspoons, because their Daycare 'Verse is, out of all the wonderful, amazing, perfect AUs/fix-its/verses out there, quite possibly my most favorite. I go back to it on bad days, good days, on days when I should be reading things for work, and pretty much any day for that matter. I love it with a boundless and endless love.
> 
> Inspired by an exchange with damek, who is amazing and agrees that a quasi-domesticated Erik would be terrifying in the contexts of PTA meetings and youth soccer leagues.

As is the case with most trials in Erik's life, this one starts with Charles gazing beseechingly at him and asking him for a favor. Not that their going-on-three years relationship is a trial, even though it started with Charles giving Erik the full benefit of sad blue eyes and asking him if he wouldn't mind opening his car door since he'd locked his keys inside, but still.

More properly, this particular trial begins one evening when Erik staggers into the kitchen after an unbelievable day at work. Charles is already there, flipping through the day's stack of mail and keeping an eye on the tortured progress of – Erik leans over to check – Raven's math assignment.

"Math is stupid," Raven says, mortally aggrieved as only a seven-year-old can be.

"Math is _useful_ ," Erik corrects. He kisses her on the top of her smooth red head, which makes her groan and fidget. When Erik transfers the kiss to the cheek that Charles wordlessly offers him, Raven rolls her eyes.

"How was the lab?" Charles asks – somewhat unnecessarily, given Erik can feel Charles rifling through his short-term memory like going through a Rolodex. "You know, generally it's a bad idea to terrify administrators so much they have to convince themselves to go back to you and still spend most of the meeting quaking in fear."

"Hmph." Erik reaches into the fridge for a beer, something proper and German to wash the taste of the past nine hours out of his mouth, and pries off the metal top with a flicker of power. "How was _your_ day?"

"That NIH grant came through for the lab." _Shuffle shuffle shuffle_ go the envelopes between Charles's fingers, apparently preoccupied but Charles's pleasure washes against Erik anyway. "While it's very exciting, there's rather a lot of paperwork and I'll have to – oh dear."

"What?" The surprise and dismay in Charles's voice has both Erik and Raven looking at him. "Charles, what's wrong?"

Charles is holding a piece of offensively magenta paper; whatever it is, Erik tells himself, it can't be that dire if the news is on a paper that loud and hideous. Still, Charles's disappointment is pervasive and it's keen enough to make him nervous. _Charles_.

"Oh, love, it's nothing tragic, just – well." Charles offers Raven the smile he usually offers to soften the blow of disappointment. "Moira can't coach the under-eights this summer, darling. I imagine she's off on one of those 'if I tell you, I'll have to kill you' assignments of hers."

"What?" Raven's abandoned even the pretense of doing her homework in favor of staring at Charles, her face a mask of blue and tragedy, and if three years ago you had told Erik his heart would break a little bit for a seven-year-old girl's disappointment he would have told you you were insane, but that is in fact what's happening as he watches Raven's eyes well up. "But she was going to coach me this year!" Raven cries. "I just know I would have made the team! It's not _fair_. What are we going to do?"

"There, there," Charles soothes, squeezing the hand that, until just now, had been holding Raven's pencil. Raven isn't very soothed. "According to the newsletter," and Erik, who's moved to hover over Charles's shoulder, can see it's the monthly newsletter for the M-Division of the Westchester Youth Soccer League, "see here, it says that the team will start looking for a new coach right away. There are plenty of parents in the area, and I'm sure they'll find someone quickly."

"But they won't be Coach Moira," Raven grumbles as she slouches lower in her chair. The arms folded over her chest are pure sulky defiance and she glares at her homework as if it personally caused Coach Moira's abdication. "She actually knows what she's doing. She played in _college_."

"Rather more than that," Charles says. "Moira was an alternate for the Olympics in 2008."

"Lovely for her," Erik grunts. To Raven's gold and crestfallen eyes, he adds, "It'll be fine. Charles is right; someone will volunteer to coach your team sooner rather than later." Raven sniffles and looks more morose than ever.

The kitchen descends into stillness, which Erik uses to drink his beer and try to relax. Raven, radiating disappointment, agrees to go back to her multiplication problems after she extracts a promise from Erik that he'll help her. (Erik only gives the promise after Raven swears that math is _useful_ , not stupid.) Charles sets aside a few bills and journals and a letter from the regional mutant rights advocacy group for Erik, but even as he sorts through the rest of the mail his gaze drifts back to the triple-folded magenta paper sitting atop his placemat, a contemplative furrow dug out between his eyebrows.

"Are we having dinner tonight?" Erik tears himself from Charles's side to drop the bottle in the recycling. "Or are we going to go hungry?"

"It _is_ Pizza Night, if memory serves," Charles says, playfully idle as he pretends to study a clothing catalogue. It wins the first smile of the evening from Raven, who bounces in her chair at the possibility of pizza in the wake of disaster; Erik has to swallow back the reminder that today is Thursday, and hence not Pizza Night, which is Fridays, lest he be considered a "spoilsport and a despotic tyrant."

(That's a direct quotation, and sometimes Erik hates that Charles insists on letting Raven read several years past her grade level.)

Of course, it falls to Erik to call in their order because Charles is incapable of remembering the precise division of their pizza (one small plain for Raven, one large with half onions and mushrooms, one-quarter peppers – half of those with the onion and mushroom, half not – and pepperoni all the way around), which Erik finds suspicious given the fact that Charles supposedly has a memory like a steel trap. While he reiterates the order for the third time – honestly they get the same thing _every Friday night_ , the pizza place should be used to this by now – he senses the peculiar, charged quiet that is Charles thinking very hard about something. He _knows_ that quiet, and worse, he knows what he's going to see when he turns around.

"Erik," Charles says after Erik finishes growling at the teenager on the other end of the line and hangs up, "Erik… I have an idea."

He doesn't need telepathy to know what it is Charles wants, not with Charles's blue eyes all limpid and heartbreakingly earnest, and it's goddamn dirty pool for Charles to ask it in front of Raven. He thinks as much to Charles, who only makes himself look even more beseeching, as if that's even possible.

 _You played for years when you lived in Europe_ , Charles thinks at him. When Erik points out that youth football in Germany can be rather different from youth soccer in America, Charles shrugs. _It's not like you'll be coaching them to the World Cup or whatever. You'll be teaching them things like coordination and the value of teamwork._

 _I'm not a team player, Charles_. Erik had been, but it was easier to work with other people when they were as equally invested in winning as he was. _Besides, I don't think I'm the sort of person who should be entrusted with other people's children. I didn't even like other kids when I was a kid._

 _You do just fine with Raven_ , Charles replies. Erik has serious doubts on that score, doubts that make Charles smile the gently smug _I-know-better-than-you-do_ smile that has the power to drive Erik up the wall. _Truly, you do. She loves you, you know._

 _Football isn't about loving your coach_ , Erik thinks, because he'd hated several of his coaches, but he respected them, and that was far more important. He determinedly ignores the warmth that steals through him when he thinks about what Charles has actually said.

"What are you _talking_ about?" Raven asks indignantly. Her head swivels between Charles and Erik, as if to track the conversation she can't hear. "Daddy! _Erik_!"

"Did you know," Charles says to Raven, and _no no no_ Erik thinks at him, "that Erik used to play soccer when he lived in Europe?"

"Football," Erik corrects while glaring daggers at Charles. "If you're going to shanghai me into something, at least use the correct terminology."

"Really?" Raven chews her lip meditatively for a moment before her face lights up and she fixes Erik with a hopeful, pleading expression that threatens to put Charles's to shame. "Erik could coach! He _could_ coach us, Daddy, couldn't he?"

"You'd have to ask him." Charles, the bastard, pointedly _does not_ at him, but wears a small smirk all the same.

"Erik," Raven begins sweetly, clasping her hands together atop the back of her chair.

"Oh, very well," Erik says before she can get any further. To forestall the flood of delight he can already see threatening to spill over, he quickly adds, "But _if_ they accept me for the position, you're still going to have to try out; don't expect any favoritism from me."

"I won't!"

Raven cheers so loudly Erik suspects she had stopped paying attention the second he had agreed to the madness of coaching seven-year-old would-be football-playing mutants. When she launches herself at him and collides with him almost hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs, her arms squeezing him as tightly as a seven-year-old can manage – which is quite tight, Erik discovers – he's fairly sure that is in fact the case. 

Still, he gives Charles a meaningful look that rolls right off Charles like rain off a duck. Not only that, Charles pretends complete obliviousness to what Erik thinks is a very dangerous expression, abandoning his mail to kiss Erik on the cheek, and damn it anyhow there's something about the way Charles smiles that melts the rest of whatever resistance he has left.

* * *

There's a good reason for Raven's optimism regarding playing for him, Erik discovers that Saturday, when he, Charles, and Raven turn up at the sports park to discover fourteen other under-eight mutants milling around in their corner of the pitch. It's murderously early for a day Erik had planned to spend doing as little as possible, so he needs a minute to work out the ramifications of what he's seeing.

"Charles…" he begins. Of course, Charles ignores him in favor of clambering out of the car. _Charles, there are fourteen tiny mutants out on the pitch right now. Please tell me more will be coming._

"The mutant youth league is just getting started," Charles explains as he pulls his laptop bag over his shoulder and helps Raven unload her duffel. Raven darts in to take it for herself, throwing a meaningful look at Erik as if to show him how responsible she is before she races over to join her friends. "But we have enough for a proper, if small, league now. There are four teams in Raven's age group."

"Four teams," Erik mumbles as he watches two of the kids start scuffling. The blue furry one is trying to get away from the blond one, and is successful only when one of the adults intervenes. What looks to be everyone's gear sits in a haphazard pile by the sidelines.

"It's better than nothing," Charles says with his usual indefatigable cheer, and Erik has to agree. "I see Katherine and Christopher and the Drakes over there; I should go over and say hello and let you get acquainted with your new players."

 _Wonderful._ Erik tucks his clipboard and water bottle under one arm, slings his own duffle over his shoulder, and trudges in the general direction Raven's gone.

The Westchester Youth Soccer League M-Division operates roughly by the same rules as its human counterpart, which means he has exactly enough kids to field and keep in reserve as substitutes. Seeing as he has no try-outs to hold now, half the plans for the morning go up in smoke; he'll have to move to working out which positions the kids will play in, and which kids will warm the bench for as long as he can possibly manage it. And then he'll probably have to spend time socializing with the parents and telling those with less-proficient kids he's not intending to sacrifice a winning season for their precious snowflake's self-esteem.

Really, it's the socializing he dreads. A gentle drift of amusement from Charles tells him he's been overheard.

Raven sees him coming as he approaches the pitch and elbows the red-headed girl standing next to her. The girl turns to say something to another red-head, this one a boy, and thus the intelligence of Erik's arrival moves from kid to kid until they've formed themselves into a ragged approximation of a line. Raven beams at him, fairly bursting with pride.

"I'm your new coach," Erik says. "You can call me Coach, or Coach Lehnsherr, or Mr. Lehnsherr. Got it?"

"Yessir, Coach Erik," the children chorus.

Charles laughing in his head does not help in the least. Erik grits his teeth. From behind him, Erik can hear and feel the pop-whir of several cameras going off.

"Now." He has the try-out roster in front of him and takes a moment to compose himself by studying it, toying idly with a paperclip as the children wait breathlessly. Being watched by fourteen pairs of very young, eager eyes is more disconcerting than he'd thought it would be, and he has to scramble to come up with something to say. "I'm going to read off the names on the roster. Raise your hand when I call your name, please. And," he adds after another pause, "tell me what position you usually play."

Unpolished they may be, but at least they've mastered the ability to wait until called on, unlike many of the scientists Erik works with. In short order, he has a reasonable approximation of what his team is going to look like, and despite himself, he thinks maybe the entire thing won't be a debacle after all.

He revises that opinion when he sees them out on the field.

 _I really did mean what I said about teaching coordination and teamwork_ , Charles says to him, in direct violation of the contract they'd made the night before, namely, that Erik was the coach and as such Charles would offer no opinion on his methods, and further, that Charles would not abandon Erik to deal with the parents by himself. _Moira always thought that making sure they had fun was just as important as technique._

 _I refuse to believe that any of this falls under any definition of 'fun'_, Erik tells him as he watches order disintegrate into madness and tries to keep track of his players.

Jean Summers, the red-head, prefers playing forward, although Moira often put her in midfield. She's also telekinetic, as Erik discovers when the ball makes an improbable ninety-degree turn and smacks Angel Salvadore (goalie, still not fast enough on her dragonfly wings to cover the full net) in the backs of her knees so she crashes into Sean Cassidy (backfield), who screeches loud enough to crack Erik's sunglasses.

He pulls out a spare pair from the back pocket of his track pants and continues to observe, and tells Charles silently _You owe me. You owe me so much sex for this_.

Henry McCoy, the blue furry one, and Alex Summers, the blond one, don't like each other much. Alex plays far forward, and Henry likes to hang back near Angel, so it's somewhat puzzling how they manage to end up scuffling and snapping at each other so often. Raven darts through them, a blur of turquoise scales and yellow jersey, chasing after Armando Muñoz – who, as he informed Erik during roll call, preferred to be called Darwin – who'd stolen the ball from her. They both seem to be somewhat more competent than the others, willing to play and capable of playing almost anywhere on the field.

In order to get Henry and Alex out of each other's hair, Erik tries to set up some kind of organized scrimmage, seven on seven with Angel in one goal and their second goalie, Remy LeBeau, in the other. However, Remy seems to be far more interested in attracting the attention of Ororo Munroe, one of the other defenders, in the way peculiar to seven-year-old boys who want to seem cool and impressive but really just look ridiculous. He nearly misses an unexpectedly well-coordinated attack from Bobby Drake but dives for the ball in time, somehow twisting in the air like origami and getting his hand up for an extension dive to block it.

The sound the ball makes as it ricochets off Remy's hand is not natural, nor is the sound that comes out of Remy's mouth. The ball doesn't bounce so much as fall, heavily, to the ground and stay there. Erik trots over, vaguely astonished to see that the ball isn't a football anymore, so much as a sphere of ice.

"Ow!" Remy folds up on himself, clutching his hand and, _oh god_ Erik thinks with desperation and irritation both, _those are actual tears_. Remy howls and rolls around dramatically. "Ow, my hand, it's broken you _jerk_ , ow _ow_!"

"Bobby!" Raven hollers from across the pitch, "Coach Moira said you can't freeze the ball!"

"Calm down and let me look," Erik growls. "And there's no crying in football, so knock it off."

Remy quiets, biting his lip as Erik examines his hand. It'll be sore, but there's nothing broken and he says as much to Charles, who silently tells him that Remy's father – Jean-Luc, a very large man, possible organized crime connections – is worried.

"You're fine," Erik informs Remy, who wavers to his feet – and then promptly hurls himself at Bobby.

It's very hard, Erik discovers, _very_ hard, trying to keep one kid who slithers around like a damn eel from strangling another kid who can turn himself into ice. It's even harder to do that and to keep looking dignified and authoritarian at the same time. Remy, tears or broken hand or otherwise, is furious and has gone from writhing around on the pitch to trying to charge up Bobby's shirt, converted to ice as it is, and Jesus, Erik realizes, it's starting to _boil_.

Finally he gives up and latches onto any bit of metal he can find on every kid on the pitch – watches, bracelets, the grommets in their damn trainers – and tugs on them meaningfully.

The kids freeze. Even Bobby, who's taken aback by the sudden stillness and reverts to flesh and bone again. Kitty Pryde, safe as she is in the midfield, almost goes invisible.

"Now," Erik says. "Your attention on me, if you will. _Now_ ," he adds for the benefit of the few not listening, "form into a line." When they don't move straight away, he barks, " _Schnell!_ "

The German does the trick, and all of the kids scramble to obey, hostilities forgotten. Even Henry and Alex refrain from starting up again, despite Alex looking sorely tempted and eyeing Henry consideringly over the dark purple head of little, telepathic Betsy Braddock. Erik levels a _look_ at him, the one that Raven says makes him look like a shark just waiting to strike, and Alex subsides.

"Before we continue, I feel it best to lay some ground rules." Erik paces slowly down the line, relishing how each kid straightens up a little when his gaze falls on them. Piotr Rasputin, whose mutation is being able to turn into steel or iron, swallows nervously. "These ground rules are few, and very simple."

He pauses to inspect Anna-Marie, who'd tackled Piotr earlier and as a result is now all over mud. She glowers up at him defiantly from under disheveled and mud-slicked red hair, but the defiance doesn't last very long as he continues to stare silently at her.

"The first rule," Erik says as he steps back to take in the team as a whole, "is that I am in charge. Is that understood?"

"Yessir, Coach Erik."

"The second rule," Erik continues, "is that I am in charge."

"But you already said – " Jean begins before Raven grinds her heel into Jean's toe and hisses for silence. "Ow!"

"The third rule: This is not a democracy. I expect you to be respectful of each other, and to remember that we are all teammates here – all mutants – and that you must put aside your petty squabbles and differences in favor of working toward our common goal. And do you know what that goal is?"

"Nossir, Coach Erik." All of them shake their heads to emphasize this.

 _Please don't say what I know you're about to say_ , Charles pleads.

"Victory," Erik tells them, relishing the word and grinning his shark-grin. "Complete and total victory."

The kids look at each other. A few of them offer him tentative smiles of their own as the idea, the _possibility_ , begins to catch on.

"We can win the Summer Tournament," Erik continues. "United, we can defeat our enemies. _Together_ , we can do anything."

 _Oh no_ , Charles sighs in his head, a mental facepalm if Erik's ever heard one.

* * *

"That was the most exhausting thing I've ever done," Erik informs Charles that night. He's so tired and sore, he's amazed he can still form words, much less stand upright in the shower. At least Charles is there to help him with that. "And I agreed to do this how many times a week?"

"Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, plus Saturday games," Charles tells him. The smile on his face under his water-slick hair is stupid and fond, and absolutely does not make Erik happy he agreed to four months of this madness. "Although I do fear by the end of it you'll have your own private army of fanatically dedicated second-graders, and plans beyond winning the Summer Tournament. Possibly involving world domination."

"Mmmm, perhaps you should have thought about my megalomaniacal tendencies before letting the soccer moms agree to put me in charge of their children." The hot water pouring down his back slowly loosens the worst of the stiffness; Charles's hand stroking the long run of his sides helps with the rest, even if parts of Erik are decidedly less relaxed than before. "You can be my consort after my army and I take over the world, if you want."

"The power behind the throne? I do like that thought." Charles nuzzles up under Erik's chin, biting thoughtfully at the notch between his collar bones and licking up his neck. He shivers despite the warmth of the shower and steam, and Charles laughs deliciously.

Erik rests his thumbs in the neat indents above Charles's ass and bends to kiss him, the slow, lazy kind of kiss that allows for speech. "I was thinking I would just keep you in bed all day and out of trouble."

"Oh, I'm sure there'd be _plenty_ of trouble I could manage to get into," Charles says, lazy and ridiculous enough that it shouldn't be hot, it shouldn't turn Erik on like this, and he still doesn't quite know what to do with something that makes him laugh and clutch Charles to him at the same time.

That's what happens though, and as they kiss Erik's laughter fades in favor of intensity and Charles begins to make promising noises low in the back of his throat, Erik decides to add _shower after every practice_ to Charles's contract.


	2. Warmup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was feeling unaccountably anxious tonight, so I doodled this out instead of thinking about anxiety-producing things. As the chapter title indicates, it's the How We Met part of the story.

Janos rarely speaks, but when he does, Erik can usually count on something depressingly on-point coming out of his mouth. If it's not some observation about Erik's life, personality, or habits, then it's something that will make more work for the entire lab, and on the _very_ rare occasion it's not one of those things, Erik doesn't quite know what to do with it.

"Free cupcakes in the front," Janos says one morning as he wanders into Erik's office, licking what Erik realizes is frosting off his fingers. When Erik blinks stupidly at him (and the handful of graduate students stampede for the door), Janos picks a crumb off his lapel and says, "You know, Lehnsherr, you wouldn't know a good thing if you fell over it."

"Don't eat in the lab," Erik says, ignoring the fact that they're in Erik's office and the lab is across the hall.

He misses out on the cupcakes – gourmet, Janos reports through a mouthful of his second one – but consoles himself by snapping at the grad students about dropping crumbs into sensitive circuitry. Considering his lab has a record as spotless as it is, it's needless snapping, but it soothes him all the same. If the notes he's writing out for the one graduate seminar the university makes him teach are a little more sarcastic than usual, he doesn't notice.

The day continues as it usually does, following the routine Erik never deviates from if he can help it: labwork with a brief break for lunch, the grad seminar at three, and then the gym to change for his run. That the day outside promises nothing but more cold and damp doesn't deter him; it's that wonderful upstate New York fall, all sun and gloriousness until it punishes you with a week of clouds, and if he hung it up for bad weather he'd never get anything accomplished. Automatically, he queues up his music and goes to stretch, working the kinks out of his muscles and the day enough that his mind starts to settle.

Some of the students glance quizzically at him as he starts down the sidewalk that leads to the quad and the parks beyond it. Erik sighs and tries to settle into his breathing – he's a professor, not a vampire; he doesn't spend his non-lab and non-class times hanging upside-down from his office ceiling – and after a few steps and the beginning of the hard beat of the music, he manages it. Under his light vest, the air warms in his lungs.

His usual track (as in, the track he runs Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; there's an alternate track for the other days) heads straight down the quad before angling off into a little parkland, a figure-eight path around a pair of lakes that offers a bit more interest, and less impact to his knees, than city running. A few other joggers are out today and he overtakes them easily, twisting around moony-eyed couples meandering down the path with an impatient huff until his stride comes naturally and he passes them without even noticing. 

One mile passes, then two, three, four, five, and he may not be quite as fast as he'd been when he was eighteen but he can still go. With his mind this loose he can sense the flow and rush of the iron in his blood and the architecture of his watch and the delicate tapestry of the electronics in his mp3 player. He can keep going – he will, he thinks as he pounds past the six-mile mark.

"What the – "

Okay, maybe he _won't_. His brain skids sideways out of his runner's high and _he_ skids sideways off the path, barely avoiding the tiny blueskin girl who'd popped up out of nowhere – or out of the bushes Erik barely avoids falling into as his feet tangle together and it needs all his coordination to sort them out. The little girl trips and lands flat on her round little bottom with an _oof_ that would be comical if Erik were the sort of person to find children amusing and adorable.

He's not. He never is, but especially not when he's sweaty and disoriented, shocked at the utter lack of transition between the rhythm of his run and being still. His mind has to work to catch up with his breath, which is racing to keep up with his heart.

The girl – she might be four, Erik has no idea how you judge these things – stares up at him with great golden eyes set in a blue-scaled face, a combination that looks vaguely familiar. Her little outfit, also yellow, something involving ducks, has a smear of mud down one side and her hands are caked with it. Erik takes all of this in with one comprehensive look and opens his mouth to ask where in god's name her parents are, don't they know there's a pond right there when – 

"Oh, I am so very sorry," says an unexpected voice with an unexpected British accent.

"I hope so," Erik says, very shortly. He fumbles for his iPod, needs a few tries to get to the stopwatch and freeze the time, not that it'll make a difference now.

While he does this and tries to reorient himself, the owner of the voice has stepped out of the bushes. He's on the short side and very… _active_ is the word, a flurry of tweed and, god help him, denim and chestnut hair. As Erik watches, British Accent folds himself in two to collect the blue girl from the dirt and the girl, Erik now utterly banished from her attention, clutches at her father's collar and begins to sob, these huge full-bodied sobs that sound far too loud to come from so little a creature.

Thank _god_ she hadn't started doing that when it was just Erik.

"There, there," the father – he's youngish, maybe a handful of years younger than Erik, croons. He sifts his fingers through the shock of orangey-red hair as the girl tucks her face into his neck and blubbers.

Weirdly, Erik has the sense the soothing is for _him_. He's just about got his breath under control and the adrenaline leaches out of his system, leaving a strange sort of tranquility behind. He doesn't like it very much.

"It's okay," the father rambles, swaying a bit. The girl says something incoherent and he smiles. It's a nice smile, Erik thinks, rather helplessly. "You're okay, Raven. It was just a little spill."

" _Hurt_ ," Raven says pathetically.

"How could it hurt?" Erik asks. "She fell an entire foot onto soft dirt. It's not concrete."

"It's the shock," the father says. There's that sudden pulse of calm again, smoothing off the edges of Erik's annoyance and, he sees, the last of Raven's tears.

"For having such short legs, they're very quick," Raven's father tells him apologetically. "I _am_ sorry she ruined what otherwise must have been a very good run."

"It's fine," Erik says, even though it really isn't. Raven's father offers him a sympathetic look over the top of his daughter's head, as if he really _does_ know it isn't.

It _had_ been a great run; he knows it in his bones, what it feels like when his body is working the way it should. His old team doctor had theorized his mutation had something to do with it, a sensitivity to the electrochemical activity associated with physical exertion, or the peculiar awareness of the metallic ions in his blood. Either way, he knows what it feels like to run well, and today he'd been doing it. He shifts from foot to foot, trying to keep that blood going and carefully ignoring how Raven's father, despite his apparent preoccupation with his still-sniffling spawn, is looking at him.

"If she's not dying, I suppose I'll be off." _Checking him out_ would be more accurate, Erik thinks, and on another day – maybe if a kid weren't involved – he'd be interested.

"Of course," Raven's father says, blue eyes clouding a bit with disappointment. Those same eyes track Erik as he brushes by and begins to run again.

Erik doesn't let himself think about that as he offers a curt good-bye and jogs out the rest of the last mile. He shouldn't have notice because he usually doesn't let himself notice, but how couldn't he; the blue of those eyes had been spectacular, the sort of color you _do_ notice, set above cheeks that had worn a few freckles and a blush that might have been embarrassment or exertion.

 _Definitely not_ , Erik reminds himself. He doesn't go for people who have kids; he'd barely been able to stand kids when he'd been one himself.

He pushes himself through one fast three-quarter-mile interval, just to show himself he can, and to shake off the distraction by the pond. The extra run means he gets back to the gym faster than usual, and even after cooling off he still itches with restlessness under his skin, so he keeps going, another loop past the gym and up toward the track, the scenic stretch of the faculty parking lot.

"Look, I don't believe you understand the gravity of the situation," a familiar, although significantly more agitated voice, is saying from one of the faculty spaces near the track. "I pay _extra_ for 'premium service,' and I do understand that you're quite busy this time of day, but I don't believe you fully comprehend that I have a four-year-old who desperately needs her dinner – what's that? An _hour_?" Raven is in his arms – he's cradling the cell phone between shoulder and cheek – and even from across the road Erik can hear the whimpers that are the prelude to full-out shrieking.

Poor bastard, Erik thinks as he tucks his iPod back into his vest pocket. A good neck roll pops some incipient stiffness out, and he's just about to let himself start fantasizing about a shower when he _hears-feels-senses_ attention focusing sharply on him, like a tap on the shoulder. It's not like any sensation he can describe and he freezes while he tries to sort it out.

"You!" Raven's father says, pointing. "Hello there!"

Erik almost glances over his shoulder. "Me?"

"Of course, you, with the metallokinesis," Raven's father says. Erik stares. "I know it's terribly rude to ask these things, but I have my keys locked in the car, a four-year-old on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown, and a desperate need for a drink. I'll very gladly buy you one if you'd unlock my car door for me."

He stares and knows he's staring, and can't help it, even as he dimly thinks _I should have known_ , given Raven's obvious mutation. "What – what did you just – "

"Yes, I am a telepath and no, I did not read your mind; I don't need to read thoughts to sense other mutants, Dr. Lehnsherr." Raven's father, Raven's _telepathic_ father, inclines his head at the car door, both hands now currently engaged in holding up Raven's dead weight, a computer bag, and a bag that must have Raven's supplies in it. Although how much stuff one kid could possibly need, Erik has no idea.

"Please," Raven's father sighs. He jostles Raven a little as the strap of the computer bag slides down his shoulder to the crook of his elbow. The expression he wears is utterly woebegone, _pleading_ , and damn it, it catches Erik hard and fast and doesn't let him go.

"Since you know everything about me," Erik says, still trying to process _telepath_ and _wants to go out for drinks_ , and the possibility that he would not object to said drinks, toddler or no, "it seems only fair I should know something about you. Your name, for instance."

"Ah, Charles Xavier, at your service. Or, you're at my service, I suppose – that is, if you'd agree to…?" Raven's father – Charles Xavier – gestures at the car door.

Erik does too, only when he does it, the locking mechanism pops open and the latch swings back as the door pulls itself open. Raven, temporarily distracted from her meltdown, shrieks and cackles in glee, a tiny mud-spattered and sneakered foot kicking Charles in the ribs.

"Magic!" Raven crows.

"Indeed it is, darling" Charles says, with a warm burst of pride that, like the soothing, seems to be for Erik and Raven both. "He's a mutant, just like you."

It would be nauseating, Erik thinks, if it weren't for the way Charles's smile deepened the lines in the corner of his eyes and took over his face, utterly genuine and so _pleased_ Erik's own heart kind of hurts a little. Whatever magic's in it seems to bring Raven back from the brink of going critical, and she offers no resistance as Charles – thanks to the back door Erik's opened for him – inserts her into her carseat and straps her in.

"You can come closer you know," Charles says over his shoulder. _I won't bite._

"Does that line actually work?" Erik asks. Charles's telepathic laughter echoes in his head, but Erik draws closer anyway.

"I did mean it about drinks," Charles says. He shuts the door; Raven splays curious fingers against the glass. The day is cold, the wind picking up as afternoon transitions into evening; it preserves the blush decorating Charles's cheeks. "I can't tonight, but I can get a babysitter for tomorrow."

"Make it lunch, if you're not busy," Erik says, daring in a way he almost never is, not with other people. "You work here."

"Genetics," Charles confirms with a smile. _I didn't want to presume_ , as if asking to use Erik as a glorified lockpick hadn't been presuming at all. _The McKellen is good, although my department always forces us to go there to wine and dine the job candidates._

"That's fine," Erik says. "Twelve o'clock?"

 _Twelve o'clock_ , Charles says, so sublimely happy Erik can't help but be happy too.

* * *

Other than Erik nearly flattening Raven, their relationship begins the way the vast majority of other relationships do, with lunch and then Erik insisting that a sandwich did not void the original agreement as to drinks, so Charles takes Erik out that night as well. It isn't one of those great, sweepingly improbable romantic things – they don't meet on a battlefield, they don't meet and realize they're each other's one true love before being parted for years – and Hollywood will never make a movie out of it.

 _They don't need to_ , Charles thinks at him as they nurse their cheap wine and watch Janos entertain Raven at the Engineering Department's end-of-term party. Erik rolls his eyes, because he may have just passed his previous relationship duration record, but he isn't going to be soppy about it, for god's sake.

"Only you would try to trample a preschooler," Janos says after Erik is finally coerced into telling him about how he and Charles met. "But clearly she's forgiven you, even though I question her taste. Did you know," he says this to Raven, who's staring at the little waterspout Janos has created in her juice cup, "generally Dr. Lehnsherr here doesn't like children?"

"Generally," Erik grumbles. "Raven's okay." Charles laughs gently in his head.

"Erk!" Raven's voice hits a pitch Erik's only ever heard from the raptors in _Jurassic Park_. Charles steps in before Raven's flailing can knock the cup over and, while he's calming her, Janos directs a smirk at Erik over Charles's head. Erik groans; he knows that smirk.

"Looks like you knew a good thing after all," Janos says.

"Yeah," Erik says, and if his voice gets all sloppy, so be it, "I guess I did."


End file.
